Despite unveiling a plan for the
mass amnesty of illegal aliens in January, President
Bush is still not satisfied that America is the
"welcoming society" he likes to
claim it is. Nor is his counterpart, President
Vicente Fox of Mexico, with whom Mr. Bush palavered last
weekend at what used to be
American soil in Texas.

The upshot of the meeting was that Mr. Fox badgered
Mr. Bush for even more amnesty for the
millions of his countrymen who have already
broken the law to get here, while Mr. Bush granted
Mexicans unprecedented—and dangerous—privileges that
virtually
no other foreign nationals enjoy.

Those privileges include what the Washington Post
described as allowing "millions of Mexicans with
short-term visas to cross the border without being
fingerprinted and photographed by U.S. authorities."
Swell. Little old ladies from Poughkeepsie have to be
virtually
strip searched when they fly to Peoria, but Mexican
nationals may come and go as they please without
scrutiny. So much for the
"war on terrorism." [Bush,
Fox Settle Short-Term Visa Spat (washingtonpost.com)
By Mike Allen, March 7, 2004]

Mr. Fox, for his part, was still not satisfied. He
went into the meeting demanding an even more total and
immediate amnesty than Mr. Bush's plan grants. As the
Washington Times reported last week, "The Mexican
government is
lobbying U.S. lawmakers and civic leaders for
amnesty or guest-worker status for millions of illegal
aliens now in the United States, working through a
coalition of U.S.-based immigration rights associations,
Mexican-American organizations and grass-roots
Hispanic groups." The coalition seeks
"expanded
education and
health care benefits for Mexican nationals in this
country, along with
additional programs for labor, community development
and access to services," most of which will be paid
for by American taxpayers, of course.[Mexico
lobbies for alien amnesty, By Jerry Seper, March
4, 2004]

Mr. Bush was not so dim as to grant these demands (at
least not yet) but he was eager to make Mr. Fox as happy
as possible. Hence, his concessions on security
procedures for Mexicans. The question naturally arises
as to why he was willing to go along, when his amnesty
plan has visibly backfired, has alienated both his
own party and most Americans and blatantly
contradicts his own insistence on the tightest possible
security measures against terrorism.

The answer, of course, is politics. The president is
desperate to
win Hispanic votes in November—indeed, given his
steadily
sinking support in polls, he is desperate to win any
votes—and both the January amnesty and the belly-flop in
Texas were calculated to do just that.

What was not reported was what Mr. Fox is probably
supposed to do for Mr. Bush—to help mobilize the
millions of Mexican-American voters and the
aforementioned "coalition" in the president's
support. Well, maybe he will and maybe he won't. It
probably depends on whether the
Democrats can cut him a better deal and whether
Mexican-American voters will support the Republicans
at all. Past campaigns offer
little evidence that they will do so in any large
numbers.

What we are beginning to see in the politics of
immigration these days is reminiscent of the latter days
of the
Roman Empire, when various wealthy candidates for
the imperial purple would openly offer cash on the
barrel to whichever soldiers would
sell them the throne. Today, cash on the barrel
certainly has its political uses, but the ability to
deliver Hispanic votes may be even more valuable and
perhaps easier to get.

As for Mr. Fox, he is less interested in our imperial
throne than his own. He needs to curry the favor of the
millions of Mexican-American voters who are also
voters in Mexico itself, which is why he has been
lobbying for amnesty so hard. Moreover, he also knows
that what is going on in the American Southwest is no
longer immigration or even invasion but what can only be
called colonization.

"No other immigrant group
in U.S. history has asserted or could assert a
historical claim to
U.S. territory. Mexicans and Mexican Americans can
and do make that claim. Almost all of Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah was part of Mexico
until Mexico lost them as a result of the Texan War of
Independence in 1835-1836 and the Mexican-American War
of 1846-1848. Mexico is the only country that the United
States has invaded, occupied its capital—placing the
Marines in the
'halls of Montezuma'—and then annexed half its
territory. Mexicans
do not forget these events."

Call it a "welcoming society" if you will, or
immigration, invasion, or colonization. The
Mexican term for it is "Reconquista," and Mr.
Bush seems determined to make it come true.

[Sam Francis [email
him] is a nationally syndicated columnist. A selection
of his columns,
America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The
Disintegration Of American Culture, is now available
from
Americans For Immigration Control.Click here
for Sam Francis' website. Click
here to order his monograph,
Ethnopolitics: Immigration, Race, and the American
Political Future and
here for
Glynn Custred's review.]